A typical user has personal user information or data that may be of a sensitive or confidential nature, including, for example, such information as personal identity information, social security number, account information, financial information, etc. When a user creates an account, the user will generally provide a certain amount of personal, identifying information regarding the user, as well as information for account access such as a username and password. Entities other than the user may add to the personal user data. Different entities may have, for example, different user data retention policies, different use policies, and different user data sharing policies. The policies of using user-information may further change without any notification to the user. In addition, the possessor of the user information may also change through a merger or buy-out of one entity by another, many times without any notice to the user.
Account access will often rely on log-in credentials (e.g., username and password) to confirm a cardholder's identity. However, if the log-in credentials are compromised, another person could have access to the user's account and, potentially, to the user's sensitive or confidential information or data. In addition, the more entities or individuals that a user shares their personal information with, the greater the risk of the user's information being stolen by a breach at one of the entities. Further, a user may only desire to share certain pieces of personal information with an entity or individual for limited purposes or limited in time.
Thus, it may be beneficial to provide exemplary systems and methods which allow users to control the use of user information to overcome at least some of the deficiencies described herein.